I Submit

Monday, January 2, 2012

You guys...2011 was an exceptional year. I saw a lot of my dreams come true: I graduated from my MFA, got a visiting professor position teaching poetry, completed and submitted my full-length manuscript. I'm excited to see what 2012 has in store!

Also, I realize I'm really, really hard on myself. I don't think I'm productive enough, don't think I read or write enough so I was just doing a mental inventory and I realize I'm no less productive than I was in previous years. I may even be more productive! I'm involved in a monthly poetry book club/workshop online. Another friend of mine asked me to be a part of a bi-weekly poetry workshop. And I've written about 12 poems in the last 4 months while teaching 3 college courses. I'm not saying any of this to brag. I'm saying it to say to my Self...shut up!

Right now I'm pulling individual poems from my manuscript that I feel uneasy about and revising them. I need to spend more time on this manuscript before I send it out again in mid-January, so that's my new year's project for now. I think I may be feeling uneasy about the new stuff I'm trying to write because I'm not actually ready to move on from this manuscript yet. So I'm going to focus less on trying to generate new work for awhile.

I'd like to highlight this portion of the eligibility criteria: Twenty or more different poems or pages of poetry in five or more literary journals, anthologies, or publications which regularly include poetry as a portion of their format.

Ummmm...if it's 20 pages of poetry, I've had that! And it doesn't look like half of the poems need to be in print pubs anymore either. The app is due by March 2012. Fingers crossed for a few more pubs by then. I sent 3 poems in to Callaloo. They rejected one and the other two are sitting tight, so hopefully that's a good sign!

Did you know that I've sent my full-length manuscript out to 23 different places so far? I've been rejected by 3, for sure, so far.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Had a poem accepted by Cell Poems today! I like that a short poem found a great home. And I'm two poems away from my NEA goal! Gonna make it. Gonna do the extensive application lol.

Okay, Expecting Magic is also out to a few more places:

Elixer Press, Omnidawn (which I got a book from their catalog for entering. nice!), Perugia Press, University of North Texas Press, Yale Younger Poets, Crab Orchard Review, BOA Editions, and the Academy of American Poets/Walt Whitman award.

All I can do is my part, which is to put it out there. The rest is up to the screeners and judges.

I've also been submitting for academic jobs/fellowships. It's hard out here for a poet without a book. I'm hoping to snag a visiting position/fellowship that lasts longer than a year next time. It's actually not been decided if I can stay at my current position for one more year, but since they won't be able to tell me that until January, I've gotta keep putting myself out there. I'm through with the anxiety about it and I've settled comfortably into just doing what I have to do mode. It's nice.

About Me

I started this blog as an unpublished poet who was desperate to be published and to get into an MFA program. This blog is a record of my successes and failures.
So far, my poetry has been published in Vinyl, Conte, North Central Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Assisi, Muzzle, Milk Money, Poetry Quarterly, Sugar House Review, PANK, and Tidal Basin Review, Thethe Poetry, and TORCH. I am a recent graduate of University of Virginia's Creative Writing MFA program in poetry, as well as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Poetry at Drake University, and a Creative Writing Instructor for Duke TIP.